Blackstone Rising

Overview

Being the product of the late 80’s the timeline of world events diverges slightly from our own. It posits a world in which the dis-compassionate conservatism of the Regan/Thatcher era never ended, corporate power went unchecked and national sovereignty slowly dissolved throughout the 90’s and 00’s. By 2010, the power of nations has all but eroded in favor of corporate sovereignty whose high capitalist practices had created a world full of rampant pollution, increased violence, severe wealth disparity and a wild technology boom that stressed personal cybernetics and gene therapy over internet communications and space exploration, both of which remain woefully underdeveloped compared with our own world.

In 2011, the Mayan Apocalypse proved to more than legend and ancient races such as elves, dwarves, dragons and faeries emerged from hiding or were reborn into society from shocked human parents. This Unexplained Genetic Expression (UGE) created new racial tensions overnight, and plunged the world into days of chaos, terror and uncertainty. In addition to the wealth of new races the ancient power known as magic resurfaced, manifesting largely in the primitive, pre-Western peoples of the world, massively empowering Native North and South Americans, Pacific Islanders, Africans and other previously disenfranchised groups who now wielded a power greater than any military technology. A decade of Bloody revolutions, desperate fights and violent coups engulfed the world, redrawing the political map, redistributing power and reassigning mankind’s relationship with the world.

This culminated, in some ways, on April 30th 2021, now known as Goblinization Day. On that day, one in every five humans or metahumans (the official term for non-human sentient species), mutated in a matter of minutes into “Goblinoids” races now known as Orcs and Trolls. Some were killed out of fear, others went mad, and when the crisis was over, people began coopting the Mayan term “The Sixth World” to refer to the Earth, a world of high magic, and high technology. The 5th world, the world of man was ended and in order to survive, people had to adapt.

That was 56 years ago. It is Now 2077 and Tribal Magic and Corporate Power have reached an uneasy peace. The Map is redrawn, the old Nationalist Collosi: China, Russia, The United States and the European Union have fallen apart, returned to smaller, more manageable nation-states who are, even now, under the thumb of massive Megacorporations, global manufacturing, distribution and commercial organizations whose capitalist dictates have now replaced the rule of law in most places. With Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, Trolls and even Dragons now contending with one another to find their place alongside humans, the Sixth World is off to a rocky start and its future remains uncertain.